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50 Ways to Get Students to Believe in Themselves [Free Download]

Students are profoundly influenced by the messages they get from the significant people in their lives about their ability to learn. Many low-confidence, underperforming students—often children of color and children of poverty—have been receiving messages their whole lives that they are not smart enough (perhaps smart overall, but certainly not smart in subject X, which could be math, writing, anything). They don’t see the point of putting forth more effort in an area where they are “dumb.”

If we are to eliminate the achievement gap, we have to change these students’ minds about their supposed low ability and persuade them about the benefits of becoming good students. To take on this mission we will need to be convinced ourselves that ability can be grown, and we will have to become convinced that learning can be accelerated for students who have experienced systematic disadvantages.

Our job then as educators, especially with students who are behind, is to:

convince them that they can grow their ability

show them how

motivate them to want to

It is particularly important that we be consistent and authentic in sending three critical messages—this is important, you can do it, and I’m not going to give up on you—in every way we can, explicitly and implicitly, in our interactions with our students. That they get these messages from us consistently makes a big difference in their belief in themselves, their investment in school, and their ultimate achievement.

These messages don’t get sent by accident; they get sent through deliberate behavior we display in specific arenas of classroom life—that is, things we say and do. Very formal, reserved people and relaxed, outgoing teachers can both succeed in sending these messages. It is not a matter of style, but it is a matter of behavior.

50 Ways to Get Students to Believe in Themselves

In 1973 Paul Simon recorded a song titled “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” Putting that syntax in a more serious title, below is a list of “50 Ways to Get Students to Believe in Themselves.” Each of these 50 ways is a way we would act in our teaching and in our schools if we wanted to press a comprehensive set of levers to get students to believe in themselves. The list is, in effect, the map for a call to action.

As you welcome students into your classroom for the new school year, think about what messages you are communicating verbally and nonverbally about your beliefs in your students’ abilities. Which of these 50 ways are you using to communicate high expectations for each student? Please share in the comments!

Dr. Saphier is the Founder and President of Research for Better Teaching, Inc., an educational consulting organization in Acton, Massachusetts that is dedicated to the professionalization of teaching and leadership. Since 1979, he and his RBT colleagues have taught in-depth professional development programs centered on the knowledge base of teaching to educators in more than 200 school districts each year in the United States and other countries. In 2001, he was appointed a panel member for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences to study the best methods for transferring well-established educational research knowledge to classroom practice. In 2010 RBT’s Skillful Teacher model was adopted by the country of Singapore as their national program for training beginning teachers. He is much in demand for inspirational keynotes and conference presentations across the country. Sloan-Kettering’s annual IDEA Institutes voted him “Best of the Best” for their first 25-year history. In recent years he has led large-scale district improvement projects forging working alliances between superintendents, union leaders, and school boards. Dr. Saphier presents each year at Ron Ferguson’s Achievement Gap Initiative Conference at Harvard. In addition to teaching the courses RBT offers and consulting to districts on organizational development, Dr. Saphier has done on-site coaching to over 1,000 principals on instructional leadership. Dr. Saphier has a bachelors from Amherst College, and a masters degree from the London School of Economics. He was a combat medic in Vietnam. After the war he entered teaching and holds degrees in early childhood from Univ. of Mass. and a doctorate from Boston University. He has been a high school history teacher and has taught fifth grade, second grade, first grade and kindergarten. He has been an administrator and a staff developer in an urban K-8 school. Dr. Saphier is an author and co-author of eight books, including The Skillful Teacher—soon to bring out its 7th edition, How to Make Supervision and Evaluation Really Work, How to Bring Vision to School Improvement, How to Make Decisions That Stay Made, and more recently, On Common Ground and John Adams’ Promise, as well as numerous articles. The Skillful Teacher has sold over a half million copies and is the bible of teaching in hundreds of districts around the country. It is used as a text in 60 university teacher preparation programs, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Middlebury and Williams.

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